Cocksure maladies do not reflect poorly on French game

This Heineken Cup result will leave a lot of French rugby fans pretty depressed. If the people I was with before the match were anything to go by, everyone over here was really confident about Stade Français' chances - over-confident in fact. I kept having to tell them: "Watch out, Leicester are a far better side than you think. They can control a game and they won't lose their heads, even if they go behind."

Internationally it has been a bad season for French rugby and Saturday made it worse. In spite of that I do not have any worries about the health of French club rugby because Stade Français do not dominate our clubs in the way that Leicester are British rugby's flagship, so this cannot be said to be a result that was characteristic of French teams.

Toulouse are a better side than Stade; Montferrand and Castres are up there too at the moment, whereas behind Leicester there are five teams who are not quite up to their level. The result on Saturday simply underlines their quality. It has been clear all year that no team in England can compete with them.

One reason why we may not have seen the best French team take on Leicester is the pool system in the European Cup. If you have an Italian team in your group, as Stade did, you are automatically in with an advantage.

The way Stade played on Saturday, though, they did not deserve to win. They kicked the ball continually and did not move it around enough. They have great centres like Franck Comba but they just ran straight at Leicester. Only Dominici showed any fire. If you play that way you will never get anywhere. If you have a player like Dominici you have to use him. I have seen them split sides to pieces in the past but on Saturday they did not move the ball at all. If they had played a more open game they could well have been victorious.

Leicester controlled things when they had to but the most important thing was that they knew how to win. During the season they have won a lot of games by one or two points, so even when they were behind they did not lose their nerve and kept working to their game plan.

The big advantage they had over Stade was that Austin Healey was just superb and Pat Howard was everywhere. I wondered beforehand about how Tim Stimpson's kicking would match up to that of Diego Dominguez - he does have the odd off day while Dominguez never seems to - but he was as good as he has been all year.

So was Geordan Murphy, who is a player I love. And it was lucky for Stade that Freddy Tuilagi was injured - he would have destroyed them. But Leicester did make more mistakes than I expected, such as that stupid punch of Martin Johnson's. He is a very good player but I do not see why referees do not give him a red card. I would have sent him off if I had been in David McHugh's place.

I really do not understand why Stade played like they did. Losing their first-choice scrum-half Christophe Laussucq beforehand might have had something to do with it: Morgan Williams did not look used to playing at that level.

Perhaps it was a tactical choice: maybe they played that way because we have not seen so much of Leicester in France recently, and so Stade expected them to use their forwards a lot like they used to. If so, it was a big mistake. Leicester have been mixing their game all season just like they did on Saturday, so it should not have come as a surprise.

One thing the game did show was that rugby here is now far more reliant on the set piece than it is in England. Leicester have the best scrum in England but they were destroyed in that area by Stade; and I saw Stade's scrum destroyed by Castres a couple of weeks ago.

Even in the lineout Stade won a lot of ball off Leicester - how often would you have expected to see Leicester lose from their own throw like they did at the very end?

Perhaps the English now have the French spirit - le fighting spirit, as we say here - and maybe the result does reflect a certain malaise in French rugby. We do not have the great players of the past but we do have a lot of talented new blood, and you should not write us off just yet. We will be back.